From this standpoint of obedience to the "inner light" they found within, they "understood" what they saw around them, and brought a fresh revelation to the world. "I was afraid of all company," says Fox during his early trials, "for I saw them perfectly where they were, through the love of God which let me see myself." For them the keynote of life is what an independent uninstructed French mystic, Brother Lawrence,[10] has called "the practice of the Presence of God," and the man to whom the practical spade-work of the mystics, the art of introversion and contemplation, the practice (very variously interpreted) of purgation, the pathway that leads to "unknowing" and to union with what men have called God, has not been entered on as a matter of living experience, is no Quaker, no matter how pious, how philanthropically orthodox, how "religious" he may be. In a meeting for worship he is a foreign body, an unconverted person. Side by side with the meeting for worship is the business meeting--a monthly meeting which is the executive unit of the society. It is held under the superintendence of a clerk, whose duty it is to embody the results of discussions in a series of minutes (voting and applause are unknown), and to send these up to the larger quarterly meeting of the district--a group of monthly meetings--delegates being appointed by each monthly meeting to secure representation. The meetings are open to all members and to outsiders on application. Most local questions are settled by the quarterly meetings, whose deliberations are on the same plan as those of the monthly meetings. Questions affecting the society as a whole, and matters otherwise of wide importance, go up to Yearly Meeting--the General Assembly of the Society--where, as in the subordinate meetings, decisions are reached by means of a taking by the clerk of the general "sense" of the gathering after free discussion. The decisions of Yearly Meeting are final. It issues periodically a Book of Discipline, in which are embodied, in the form of epistles and other documents, the general attitude of the society as a whole in matters of belief and conduct. A number of sub-committees are perpetually at work for special ends--social, philanthropic, etc.--and there is attached to Yearly Meeting a standing committee known as the Meeting for Sufferings, established in 1675 in the interest of the victims of persecution. It is composed of representatives of quarterly meetings and of certain officers. It is always engaged in the interest, not only of members of the Quaker body in difficult circumstances, but of sufferers all over the world. It does an enormous amount of unpublished work. Notorious, of course, is the history of the party of Quakers who arrived in Paris on the raising of the siege[11] with food and funds for the famine-stricken town; less known is the constant quiet assistance, such as that rendered to famine and plague districts and at the seat of war in various parts